【英语生活】美国的工作岗位哪儿去了？

There are many reasons U.S. companies give for their lack of robust hiring─from weak consumer spending to uncertainty over the direction of government policies on debt and spending.

But a closer look at hiring provides a more nuanced picture. Some industries have significantly boosted employment over the past year while others continue to shed workers. To be sure, even those adding jobs are hiring far fewer than would be needed to put America's 14.1 million unemployed back to work.

Manufacturing has been adding jobs since the start of 2010 due in large part to the sharp rebound in automobile production at General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC that has filtered to suppliers. On the flip side, just about anything to do with housing, from furniture makers to hardware stores, remains depressed. Homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc., of Horsham, Pa., plans to bring its total employment to 3,300 by Oct. 31. But that is less than half of its peak of about 7,000 in 2005.

'It's very incremental and deliberate re-hiring,' said Jon Downs, senior vice president of human resources for Toll. 'We aren't in a wholesale hiring mode.'

Over the past year, private employers have added 1.7 million jobs, but the net result of 659,000 cuts in government jobs─about a half of them temporary Census workers─mean total U.S. payrolls were up by only 1 million in that span. That leaves the country with 7 million fewer jobs than when the recession started in late 2007.

Here's what it looks like on the ground in some industries that are among the biggest job gainers and losers over the past year:
Restaurants and bars

More than 9.3 million Americans work in restaurants, about one in every 10 employed, and the industry has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak hiring environment. Food service has added nearly 216,000 jobs since December 2009, when the industry's employment bottomed out in the recession. The 2.1% job growth that restaurants have experienced in the year ending June from a year ago is more than twice the nation's 0.9% job growth rate.

Of course, restaurants continue to hire even as the overall economy remains dismal because the work tends to be low-paying, either minimum wage and part-time, or both. Consider McDonald's Corp. The burger giant hired more than 62,000 people on a national hiring day in April. 'McDonald's and its franchisees continue to receive applications and hire thousands of people every day, whether for short-term work experience or a life-long career,' said Danitra Barnett, Vice President of Human Resources for McDonald's USA.

The job growth is expected to continue: Industry estimates suggest the sector will add 1.3 million jobs in the next decade.

美国公司为它们未能展开强劲招聘给出了诸多理由，从疲弱的消费者开支到政府债务和开支方面政策方向的不确定性，不一而足。

但更仔细地审视招聘情况，则会看到更为微妙的情形。过去一年，一些行业大大增加了雇员人数，而另外一些行业则继续削减工人数量。诚然，就算是这些增加的职位也远远达不到让美国1,410万失业者恢复就业所需的水平。

自2010年初以来，制造业就一直在增加职位，这种情况很大程度上是由于通用汽车公司(General Motors Co.)、福特汽车公司(Ford Motor Co.)和克莱斯勒(Chrysler LLC)的汽车生产急剧反弹，渗透到了供应商层面。另一方面，从家具制造商到五金店，任何与房地产相关的行业都保持低迷。宾夕法尼亚州霍舍姆的住宅建筑商Toll Brothers Inc.计划在10月31日前让员工总数达到3,300人。但这个数字还不到其2005年员工数量峰值7,000人的一半。

Toll负责人力资源的资深副总裁乔恩•唐斯(Jon Downs)说，这是渐进式的、深思熟虑的重新招聘，我们没有处于大规模招聘的模式。

过去一年，私营部门雇主增加了170万个职位，但政府职位削减65.9万个（其中约有一半为临时性的审计工作人员），最终意味着美国在此期间的总计就业人数仅增加了100万人。如此一来，美国比2007年底经济衰退开始之时减少了700万个职位。

以下是过去一年职位增加/减少幅度最大的一些行业的基本情况：

餐厅和酒吧

从事餐饮行业的美国人逾930万，占就业人口总数的一成左右，而且这个行业是其他方面都显得黯淡的招聘大环境中少有的一个亮点。在经济衰退期间，餐饮服务行业的就业人数在2009年12月触底，自那以来，餐饮服务行业增加了近21.6万个职位。截至6月的一年，餐饮行业的职位数量较上年同期增加2.1%，比0.9%的全国增速高出一倍以上。

当然，在整体经济依然惨淡之时，餐饮业仍继续招聘的原因在于这个行业的工作往往薪酬较低，要么工资最低、要么为兼职，或者两者兼具。想想麦当劳(McDonald's Corp.)。这家汉堡巨头在今年4月的一个全国招聘日活动中招募了逾6.2万人。麦当劳美国公司人力资源副总裁达尼特拉•巴内特(Danitra Barnett)说，麦当劳及其特许经营店不停地收到求职信，每天都会雇佣数千人，无论这些人是寻求短期工作经验还是想终生的事业。

餐饮行业的职位数量增长预计还将继续：业内预测显示该行业未来10年将增加130万个职位。